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Hollywood's 100 Favorite TV Shows: 18 ABC Shows That Made the List

10:12 AM 4/7/2016

by
THR Staff

Courtesy of Photofest

Everyone has a favorite TV show. It might be the one you loved most as a kid or the one you watched with friends in a dorm room or the the one you shared with a significant other. The Hollywood Reporter asked more than 2800 Hollywood insiders people — including 779 actors, 365 producers and 268 directors, among others — to tell us their favorites and then ranked the top 100 from Desperate Housewives (No. 100) to …..

Beyond the No.1 show, THR looked at how each network fared in the voting for the 100 favorite shows: NBC, CBS, FOX, HBO, and Netflix. THR also looked at the best shows by decade: 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s

Here are the 18 shows from ABC that made the list of Hollywood’s 100 Favorite TV Shows.

Desperate Housewives (No. 100)

(2004-2012) ABC

Danny Feld/ABC

Creator Marc Cherry originally wrote Desperate Housewives for cable as an homage to Sex and the City. "It was the next part of the story of all those girls looking for Mr. Right," says Cherry, 53. "What happens after you find Mr. Right and you move to the suburbs and you're still unhappy? But when the cable networks got it, they didn't think it was scandalous enough."

Read more: TKT

The Brady Bunch (No. 93)

(1969-1974) ABC

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Sherwood Schwartz's sitcom about a blended family can be seen daily in 122 countries. "Everyone still wants a hug from me," says Florence Henderson, 81, who played the perfect mom, even if she didn't always have perfect co-stars. "There were creative differences with Robert [Reed]," she says, "who'd forget that we weren't doing Shakespeare."

Scrubs (No. 87)

(2001-2010) NBC, ABC

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Zach Braff nearly blew his first audition to star in this offbeat medical comedy. "He sent a tape," recalls creator Bill Lawrence, 46. "It was horrible. I'm sure he was hungover." He was better in person.

Alias (No. 84)

(2001-2006) ABC

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J.J. Abrams' spy-fi series put Jennifer Garner in a different wig and clingy outfit every week, but that was only part of its appeal. "It was really about a family that happened to be spies," says Victor Garber, 66, who played Garner's spy-boss father. "That's what made it relatable."

The Flintstones (No. 80)

(1960-1966) ABC

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The cartoon about a prehistoric family was way ahead of its time — it was the first primetime series to show a couple in bed together (that'd be Fred and Wilma). Fox talked to Seth MacFarlane in 2012 about a reboot, but it never happened. "In a world where there are so many animated fathers on TV, where does Fred Flintstone fit in?" the Family Guy creator, 41, pondered at the time.

Scandal (No. 77)

(2012-Present) ABC

"I had the privilege of sitting with President Obama and the first lady at the Kennedy Center two years ago," says Shonda Rhimes, 45, creator of TV's most over-the-top political soap opera. "He said, 'The White House is nothing like Scandal.' He thought it was hilarious that a president would have time to do all the pining and loving that [the show's] president does. But I love the vision of them all sitting around [the White House], bingeing through the episodes."

Full House (No. 76)

(1987-1995) ABC

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"The show was despised by the Hollywood community," says Full House creator Jeff Franklin, 60. "The initial reviews were horrendous." The Hollywood community eventually warmed up to the fam­ily sitcom, though; Netflix is reviving the series (without the Olsen twins) next year with Fuller House.

Mork & Mindy (No. 72)

(1978-1982) ABC

"There was one time we were wait­ing backstage," recalls Pam Dawber, 63, who played Mindy opposite Robin Williams' wacky Mork. "I noticed a robe lying around, and I put it on and started dancing, singing, 'Hare Krishna.' Then Robin put on a robe and started dancing, too. He even found a tambou­rine. Everybody laughed so hard, the whole thing ended up staying in the show."

Moonlighting (No. 67)

(1985-1989) ABC

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It was the charming verbal sparring between co-stars Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd that made this PI dramedy such a hit. But some also tuned in for Agnes DiPesto, the oddball receptionist who greeted every caller with a poem. "People still call me Ms. DiPesto," says actress Allyce Beasley, 61. "She seems to have been an indelible character in a lot of people's minds."

Taxi (No. 66)

(1978-1983) ABC, NBC

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James L. Brooks says he got the idea for the show when reading a magazine article about a cab company "where everyone had an ambition to be something else." He visited the company before writing the pilot and observed, he says, "a very short taxi dispatcher being given a bribe." And Danny DeVito's career was born.

Bewitched (No. 62)

(1964-1972) ABC

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Erin Murphy was a toddler when she began playing Tabitha, daughter of witch/housewife Samantha Stevens, but the 51-year-old actress vividly remembers her TV mom: "Elizabeth Montgomery had a dirty sense of humor, and she loved horse racing," she says. "She was amazing."

Roseanne (No. 61)

(1988-1997) ABC

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John Goodman became an unlikely star when he landed the role of Dan Connor opposite comedy queen Roseanne Barr in her hit sitcom about a blue-collar family struggling to get by. "I probably got a bit of a swelled head now that I look back on it," says Goodman, 63. "I thought I was handling it well, but I self-dramatize a lot."

The Wonder Years (No. 56)

(1988-1993) ABC

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"It was terrifying," Fred Savage, 39, once said about his first kiss, which happened to occur onscreen in the pilot of this sweetly nostalgic series about growing up in the suburbs in the late '60s. Just his luck, it took six takes to get it right. "The one good thing about getting your first kiss on camera," noted co-star Danica McKellar, "is that you know for sure it's going to happen."

Castle (No. 42)

(2009-Present) ABC

Adam Larkey/ABC

This procedural about a mystery writer moonlighting as an NYPD detec­tive gets solid ratings, if not much love from critics. But being a critical darling isn't everything. "I tend to safeguard how cool Castleisn't," says star Nathan Fillion, 44.

Happy Days (No. 41)

(1974-1984) ABC

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The network had one note regarding Fonzie: Lose the threatening-looking leather jacket. But producer Garry Marshall argued that the jacket was motorcycle safety equipment, and a compromise was reached: Fonzie could wear it when his bike was on the screen. "That's why you saw the motorcycle in Mr. C's kitchen," explains Anson Williams, 65, who played Potsie. "And in Fonzie's apartment and at Arnold's …"

Twin Peaks (No. 20)

(1990-1991) ABC

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It only lasted two seasons, but David Lynch's surreal crime series built enough of a cult following that Showtime is bringing it back for a revival in 2017. That cult includes big names, like Lost's Carlton Cuse, who says he's constantly paying homage to Peaks with his creepy A&E series Bates Motel: "Twin Peaks was like a shot of Everclear straight to your subconscious," he says. X-Files creator Chris Carter is a big fan, too. "Sui generis" — Latin for "one of a kind" — is how he describes it.

Lost (No. 15)

(2004-2010) ABC

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Showrunners Damon Lindelof, 42, and Carlton Cuse, 56, didn't think viewers would notice the "Dharma Initiative" logo — the emblem for the fringe-science group that wouldn't become important until season two — stuck on the side of the crashed plane in the pilot of their castaway mystery. "But [the logo] exploded across the Internet," recalls Cuse. "It really inspired us to be complicated — people wanted that, even though it was certainly not what the network wanted."

Modern Family (No. 14)

(2009-Present) ABC

Courtesy of ABC

The show's casting director saw 1,400 actors; 400 of them auditioned for creators Steve Levitan and Chris Lloyd. But even as the cast was whittled down to eight, tweaks were made. "Jesse Tyler Ferguson came in for the part of Cam, but he didn't feel right," recalls Levitan. "So we asked him to come back for Mitchell. He said, 'Thank God, because I'm really more of a Mitchell.'"